Mostly I was trying to emulate some of the pies I see coming from Norma's experiments, combined with home oven temps and ability to hold the dough for a few days or even freeze it, plus trying to figure out how to use the Preferment Dough Calculation Tool. After reading a lot of info, and getting confused, I think I made a preferment Lehmann/Reinhart. LOL I have no idea. I also have no pictures, but was really pleased with the results of this dough, so I am going to keep messing with it until I can make something consistent for home oven cooking.

I made 4 balls of 210 grams each (My stone is 12 inches) baked at 430 in my Kenmore gas wall oven with the stone right in the center rack. This oven has a separate broiler at the bottom. I did not check my stone temp, as my IR gun needs batteries. When the oven indicated it was up to temp I baked the first pie for 10 minutes. The other 3 pies needed only 8 minutes.

From what I had read, and the notes I wrote down, I should have stirred this in the KA for a few minutes, rest and then mix for another 3 to 4 minutes, but I have been so used to making no-knead bread, I forgot, and mixed this dough by hand. About 9 am I just threw all ingredients into the bowl and started hand mixing into a shaggy mess. Got as much off my hands as I could, let rest for 15 minutes, did a full stretch and fold, and tossed into covered plastic container straight to the fridge. I folded the dough again after 30 minutes, and again after 30 more. When I would think about it, I'd do another fold, but probably only 2 more times that day. The next morning about 5 am, I did a full on the counter stretch and fold (no flour/no oil on the board) put back into fridge for 30 minutes, and then I balled, slightly oiled and bagged and returned the balls to fridge.

By the time I had time to make pizzas, it was 8 days later, but those pizzas were great! I removed the dough from fridge and did quick reball, they sat for about an hour before i began to open the first one. (it was really hot here that day) If I hadn't been so hungry, and worried about getting the balls opened, I might have captured something to show y'all.

I started a new 12% preferment formula yesterday, and will try this 20% one again next week, just for comparison. Pictures for sure in the next posts.

I started these doughs about 7 am, made 1 batch with GM BFB flour, and another batch with Bakers & Chefs Bread flour that I bought at Sam's Club. They were made with Morton's Kosher, Omaggio EVOO and pure maple syrup for one batch (GMBFB), and honey for the other (Sam's BR FL). (I did not adjust the hydration using the liquid sugars, because I couldn't figure it out!)

I mixed each batch for 3 minutes in the KA on stir. rested 5 minutes, then stirred again for 4 minutes. I then placed the doughs into plastic containers, and did stretch n folds every 30 minutes 3 times. By about 5 pm I took out the dough and it looked so pretty, I wanted to bake bread with it! Then I balled up each batch and took 5 each of the bagged balls and stuck them into a freezer bag and straight to the freezer. The remaining 6 balls are in my fridge. I'll take some pics of them in a few to check the bubble conditions, and post later. Of course, I mixed the balls up, and have no idea which is which! I really need to get more organized. I may cook 2 pies tonight, then 2 tomorrow, and 2 the next day. Let's see how that turns out.

I ended up waiting until the next day to bake 3 pies with 3 balls of the above mentioned 12% dough. At this point it was not a same day dough, and had been in the fridge about 23 hours after the balling stage.

At 4:30 pm I took out 3 bags and did a table stretch/fold and reballed quickly to get a feel for the dough while I prepped my ingredients and then waited for the oven to get up to temp (430 degrees). I chose 2 balls which where a bit puffier than the other (trying to determine which had the honey and which had the maple in it, but I couldn't tell by taste just that 3 of the six balls in my fridge were puffier than the other 3, so I don't know which was which) The flatter of the 3 doughs I chose was the last one I baked, since it seemed to need a bit more time to rise.

The first pie took some oven spring nicely, but took much too long at 13 minutes to get there. I did not crank up the oven to a higher temp, but I should have. Instead I raised the placement of my stone in the oven...bad idea as it then took 16 minutes to cook the second pie, and it was terrible. That third ball which began flatter than the other 2 got the benefit of lowering the stone placement in the oven again, and it took 13 minutes to cook through, but it managed to turn out almost as good as the first pie, although it wasn't ideal it did taste good, and was not as tough as pie number 2.

From what I could tell with this dough, the extensibility was fairly good if I let the dough rest a few minutes after stretching and opened gradually. I realized the dough was only out of the fridge about 1 hour by the time the first pie baked. The second ball was fighting me at every turn when I tried to open it and just would not open evenly. The third ball opened up fairly easily (I'm sure I rushed the final rises), but that 2nd pie was horrible. Had to eat just the toppings on that one. lol. Luckily I left myself one slice from the 3rd pie with no jalapenos, or my dinner would have been merely pizza toppings that night.

The remaining 3 balls stayed in the fridge and I finally got around to baking them on Sunday (at 500 to 550 temps) and all 3 were fantastic! (Best pies yet) The pizzas cooked up beautifully in 6, 5 then 4.5 minutes. ( I threw the first one in at about 490 because hubby was hungry) These were cold fermenting for 4 and a half days, and they were a bit slack, but they opened up beautifully. These pies were much more similar in texture to the 20% preferment mentioned in the first post, but baked at higher temps, and with a very pleasing flavor which we both agreed outshined those first 20% pref. pies at least a little bit, and were absolutely better in every way than the same 12% preferment dough after just one day cold ferment. I still have 6 balls of this 12% preferment dough in the freezer. Who knows when I'll get around to baking them, but I'll post here when I do.

My own ideas about how the doughs felt and responded, and how I premixed the 20% dough by hand, but used my KA mixer for the 12% dough are that it's just easier to mix by hand and not dirty up my mixer for a long cold ferment. The KA mixed dough seemed tougher after a short cold rise, but softened up considerably after days in the fridge. Had I baked the 20% dough at 500+ temps, I don't doubt I would have had exceptional results as well, and quicker pies than those 13 minute bakes. My main impetus for using 20% preferment the first time was to just use up some natural starter (actually MORE starter, since it always grows so danged much when it's fed!) I do believe that I could use 2% starter and get similar results, but I like to get rid of starter constructively, rather than throwing it out, so I see many more 20% or higher preferment doughs mixed by hand with stretch and folds to strengthen in my future. I am ready to just go ahead and prep a small batch of 40% preferment dough and stick it in the freezer to see what happens.

The next pics show my sauce and ingredients. I made a sauce using some canned dice tomatoes I got at Sam's, blended with some home dried tomatoes and dried roasted red pepper, plus a clove of garlic and some olive oil mixed in the food processor. I had to strain the sauce because I did not have enough dried tomato to thicken it up.

The basil I use is called boxwood basil and the leaves are very small, but the flavor is really good. I did not macerate the basil, just stirred it in.

Lastly, here are some pics from the 4 plus day cold fermented doughs baked more quickly at higher temps. I was of course in a hurry, and it is always hard to tell if my macro pics are in focus, until it's too late and the pies have been eaten long before the photos are downloaded to my computer! Looks like I only took shots of the first 2 pies, but they all were delicious, and had similar textures, even though my oven temp got hotter and the bake times shortened with each pie, since I aimed for 525, but started the first pie at 490.

In any event...I think hand-mixed high % preferment dough for baking in the home oven on a stone with long cold ferment is the only way to go until I build an outdoor oven. Next time I won't make such a large batch, but I do still have those other 6 balls in my freezer, and I may attempt to cook those in my Mini Black Egg this weekend. I'll post results as they arise.

By the way, the cheese on these 2 pies is asadero, since I was out of Mozz.

I guess these are NY style from what I keep reading... This dough is much tastier than the Neapolitan's I've made, but I can't decide which I like better.definitely different animals.

I'm already planning a home build brick oven, but I gotta dial in some dough recipes so I'll have a good beginning.

All this baking has been so much fun, and I enjoy seeing my husband's smile when I tell him I'm making pizza. Did I mention..he's the one who's crazy for pizza....and I still have not made myself a Bianco or a Margherit. I see all those toppings and just start piling them on. DOH!

SO, a few days back in the starter threads I was talking about making a dough using max starter like 40%, but I realized the 20% ratio worked well per my post # 1 here, and Texas Craig mentioned my dough might fall apart if I went to 40% so I went for an extremely simple dough using the same formula I used in my first post but I used 20% unfed starter rather than fed starter.

That starter was ripe very alcoholy and ready to be fed, but the I only thing I fed it with was my dough ingredients, all dumped in at once and mixed by spoon. As soon as all the flour was incorporated, I just put the container in the fridge. I then did stretch and folds four times at 30 minute intervals that evening and it spent the rest of the time in the fridge until today when I took it out at 5 pm and balled it up then left on the counter while my oven came to temp. I went for 500 degrees and moved my stone to the very bottom rack of my oven.

The dough was quite slack and I thought I should have done more stretch and folds, so I did a quick one before balling. I easily opened 4 balls after about 1 hour bench rise in my very hot kitchen and baked four pizzas at 500 for 7 minutes each. I was amazed at how wonderful and different these pies were compared to the same formulation using fed starter, but baked at diff temps.

I still have to figure out how long that dough was in the fridge...I mentioned it in the starter thread, so I gotta go look. I also have to download pics, and resize, but for a nearly effortless dough, this was just a great experiment.I'll post pics tomorrow.

I read a lot of information last week, and worried about when to put the salt into my dough, how to get proper autolyse, how to create perfect hydration, how much starter to dough % is overkill, how long to mix, what temp is my fridge, where should I place my stone, and multitude of other thoughts that I basically tossed out the window. Well, not all of it, but plenty of it. This is about experiments, and not what I have seen come before me...I did realize that 40% starter was probably not gonna work very well thanks to Craig, and that I should move my stone to the bottom of the oven, not the top like I tried last time. lol.

SO...I do want to use maximum starter, preferably using discard form my starter rather than actually discarding it, and have a dough that can sit awhile in the fridge and still be viable. Here's what I came up with.

I took my jar of starter out of the fridge about 4 pm last Thursday. It needed to be fed, and had a pungent layer of very strong hooch (but it was no IPA or I woulda drank it) instead I stirred it in. I was gonna discard half then feed, but I decided to just take out some unfed starter and use it in a recipe.

I did nothing more than toss all of this into my plastic container, stir it with a spoon about one and a half minute (barely enough to just mix the dry into the wet) and covered it then straight to the fridge. (I checked and my fridge is 43 degrees in the area where I keep my dough) I waited half hour then did a stretch and fold, and did this 3 more times that evening at 30 to 40 minute intervals.

I ignored the dough on Friday, and did one more stretch and fold either on Saturday or Sunday morning (seriously, I did not want to think about this dough too much, because I really doubted it was gonna work out)

By 3 pm yesterday I decided I should go ahead and make some pies (4 full days of cold ferment with minimal care) First I made sure I had pizza fixin's, then I got a phone call, so I finally took the dough out at 4 pm and it seemed really wet and slack, but not too bad. I think it could use a few more s/f's so I did a full on s/f on the table then cut the dough into 4 lumps and left them on the counter while I prepped my toppings. About 20 minutes later I got each lump did mini s/f's on them and let bench rest while my oven came to temp (500 degrees this timeand with the stone rack at lowest level)

I did have to use a lot of flour (50/50 WW/BF) cuz this dough was stickier but not totally unmanageable, and it opened up readily though it looked like it could easily tear if I weren't careful. Damn, I wish I had taken pictures of the dough. By far, these balls were easier to open than any I've previously made.

I checked the first pie at 5 minutes but it had to go to 7 to get a nice browning on the bottom, yet my toppings are still browning more than I want. All 4 pies were very good, very tender, not too chewy, and with a nice airy cornicione around the majority of the rim. Some areas had more of a bready crumb, but all in all a really good NO FUSS dough recipe that I will definitely try again.

Annoying as heck isn't it. Unless I'm only typing a couple sentences, I type into MSWord and copy over to here - that way if it pukes on me, I don't have to retype it.

Great looking pies as always!

CL

Well Craig, It never happened to me before, but I should know to never trust any html text box in any forum I type information in. Loss of posts has happened too often all over the internet and I just otter know better.

So what do you think of this higher hydration 20% unfed starter dough? How is it possible that not babying this dough in any way could create such good results? I'm really surprised that I have met with so few failures in the pies I've made, especially when my methods are not very traditional from what I've read. Here I thought it was important to get the starter domed first, then take a very small amount of that and create a preferment, then mix with part of the flour and water and definitely not the salt, then add the other stuff after autolyse, blah, blah, blah. I just tossed it all in at once and was extremely happy with the results.

blah, blah, blah...that wasn't very nice, and I'm half-joshin' y'all, but I am flummoxed by this greatly unexpected outcome.

So much time has passed since my last experiments. I had some health problems to deal with (stupid cancer), but I'm gonna try to make some Mini pizzas in my mini black egg tomorrow. Since this was my last stepping off spot, I'm going to try a toss it together starter dough and hope for the best.

BTW, my neglected starter has been in the back of my fridge for 2 years and it was a fairly solid mass which had a slightly pleasant aroma-but an awful grey color. I tossed it out and made a new batch using some dried starter I had stored in my freezer. So glad I had the foresight to save me some dried starter.

Looking forward to getting back into the swing of pizza making bliss.

I created 2 batches of preferment Saturday night and started mixing 2 batches of dough at 6am Sunday morning. I used a 20% preferment calculation for this dough to create a total of 30 balls @ 200 grams each, which I plan to try in my mini black egg (at lower temps) today around 2pm. Have not cranked up that beast for a few years, so I may have to switch this to an oven bake or even try the bbq grill.

I created this "quick dough" after reading up on use of yeast with preferment because I forgot to give myself enough time to prepare for a long cold ferment and a pizza party is happening.

The first batch had molasses as the sugar and had ADY with warm water.

The second batch had pure maple syrup and IDY with warm water.

Both batches were stirred with a spoon and hand mixed into shaggy dough just until flour was incorporated. Rested at room temp approximately 30 minutes and folded, then another 30 minutes and folded. 30 minutes more and I balled the bulk blob of dough until it was silky with tension and split into 15 200 gram balls which I placed in fridge. The same method was used with second batch as well. At this point the dough is springy enough to think it will make excellent pizza. Maybe I used too much yeast? I'll post more later with pics.

I'm going to continue posting here in the what did I make this time theme which runs my life. I knew I had made great pizza in my home oven using high hydration and no yeast, so I will continue experimenting, with that now that I think I deciphered my old notes. The last batch of dough I made did have 0.25% ADY with 12% SD and 62% hydration (2% each oil, salt, sugar). I started around 8 am, hand mixed and did 5 folds over a roughly 3 hour RT timeframe then put the bulk dough in the fridge overnite. Next morning I balled the dough @255 g each put each in plastic bags then stuck them all in the freezer. Yesterday I took out 2 balls at 10:30 and let them thaw in my cool kitchen for 5 hours.

There did not appear to be enough development, so I was a little worried and I turned on the oven light stuck both balls in very close to the oven light for 1.5 hours. When I took the balls out to heat up the oven I reballed 1 and let the other alone. The unballed skin was very easy to open, but the thickness was uneven, and had I not placed the skin on the cornfloured board, I would have re-balled it. That pie was cooked on stone at 550 for 9 mins, and was a good pizza, but it really tasted kinda flat, almost as if I had forgot the salt. The re-balled pie was nearly impossible to believe....flavor was exceptional, and the crust had that eggshell exterior with soft interior. I baked it for 9 mins as well, but the bottom was not nearly as dark as the 1st pie.

I currently have 6 more balls of this formula in my freezer, and will post further as the bakes happen. Wish we hadn't scarfed down that 1st pie so quickly before I could get a picture , since I don't really want to bake another pie that isn't re-balled, just for comparisons sake. . Here's a pic of that 2nd pie.

Any suggestions for what to top this pesto with? I wanna make it the sauce for my next pie, but somehow pepperoni sounds totally wrong.

It's got fire roasted butternut squash, golden beets and red bell pepper, with fresh garlic, parm, evoo, salt and a splash of balsamic. I used almonds instead of pinyon nuts since my pinyons are still in the shell.

Slightly sweet and very smoky, garlicky flavor. Just a tiny taste has me salivating like crazy.